Agile Instructional Design: The Big Questions

“Those of you responsible for creating software training are likely already familiar with the agility required
to meet project demands. For those of you not as familiar with that world, we’ll look closely at AGILE
instructional design to determine if it is a process that gives us a greater ability to respond to our changing
environments and needs—and keep up with today’s rapid pace of change.”

The only constant is change. It’s a
philosophical quote that rings true for many of us. And, for many of us, the
speed of change is only getting faster and faster. As eLearning professionals,
how can we possibly keep up with the rapid pace of change and continue to design, develop, and deliver effective learning
solutions? How can we ensure our learners transfer knowledge and skills to
on-the-job competence and perform effectively at every changing moment?

AGILE
instructional design is one possibility. AGILE (all caps) is an acronym that
refers to five core methodologies applied to instructional design. This methodology,
pioneered by performance-support practitioner and industry thought leader
Conrad Gottfredson is related to but is not the same thing as agile software
development, which I discuss in the next section of this article.

Increasing our agility with an AGILE
approach

Those of you
familiar with software development processes may also be familiar with the Agile Manifesto. Much has
been written about agile methodologies, especially Scrum, Lean, and Kanban, which share several key elements: valuing
one set of priorities, short iterations, transparency and accountability, and
built-in quality. Keep in mind that these are software development methods.

AGILE instructional
design, according to Gottfredson, is built upon similar values and
represents five core methodology areas—align, get set, iterate & implement,
leverage, and evaluate. Given the fact that we’re tasked to prepare our
learners to meet the demands of our ever-changing business environments,
instructional designers can also come to value the strengths of such an
iterative approach. AGILE instructional design was “founded upon the need of
today’s organizations to be agile and adaptive,” says Gottfredson.

Figure 1: AGILE instructional design, defined by Conrad
Gottfredson, PhD, is an iterative approach to design and development

As we’ll
discuss in this case-study series, AGILE instructional design is not a complete
departure from the well-known ADDIEmodel. It is, however, a process of design
and development that allows learning teams to more rapidly deploy a core
learning solution, with a complementary performance-support system.

Why your project teams need pigs and
chickens

Let’s say
we’re scoping a project—operation breakfast: bacon and eggs. We’ve decided to
use AGILE instructional design and build our project team with pigs and
chickens. Wait, pigs and chickens?! As project team members, pigs
are completely committed to the project’s outcome, as they must make the
ultimate sacrifice to provide the bacon. On the other hand, chickens are
involved in the project via egg production, but only in a non-sacrificial way. (Please
note: No animals will be harmed in this series of articles!)

Our project
teams are the same. We need both pigs and
chickens. We need those pigs—the process owners, primary SMEs, design and
development team members, etc.—to provide and review content, move the project
forward, and take responsibility for the outcomes. But, we also need chickens.
We need our executive teams to have visibility of our projects. We need to gather
input from related stakeholders, both internal and external. As chickens, these
individuals are certainly involved in our projects and may provide consultation
or other guidance, but they’re not as committed to the overall outcome as the
pigs.

Think about
your current projects. Do you have a good balance of pigs and chickens? If not,
how could you change the balance of power? Have you ever allowed chickens to
derail your project momentum? Throughout this case study series we’ll look at
the composition of a successful eLearning project team, through the lens of
AGILE instructional design.

Answering the big questions

This case
study will also seek to answer a few additional questions regarding AGILE
instructional design:

Can eLearning teams really move content through the design and
development process more quickly?

How do delays to other projects impact our AGILE instructional
design work and timelines?

How is the SME relationship impacted?

Looking at the big picture, how can we best define a framework for
handling and managing feedback and input?

Those of you
responsible for creating software training are likely already familiar with the
agility required to meet project demands. For those of you not as familiar with
that world, we’ll look closely at AGILE instructional design to determine if it
is a process that gives us a greater ability to respond to our changing
environments and needs—and keep up with today’s rapid pace of change. Stay
tuned!

Great intro article - looking forward to reading the subsequent installments. As our timelines continue to shrink (and our commitments continue to explode), all IDs and developers need to address how to do the most with what we have.

11/15/2013 3:01 am by bolaowoade

I am really looking forward to the next article. I've known about Agile software development but don't really understand it fully.

Are you an instructional designer looking for ways to infuse your work with a fresh approach? If so,
the
Guild Academy’s upcoming AGILE Instructional Design course may be a good option. Taught by an
industry
thought leader and master instructor, Conrad Gottfredson, the course employs the innovative GEAR
methodology so you can apply your learning almost immediately.

In many organizations, subject matter experts (SMEs) often receive assignments that involve developing training or learning materials, even though they may not understand the principles of instructional design. A team of investigators did some practical experiments and came up with ideas you can use to help your SMEs at least understand how instructional designers design.

Formal design process gets a lot of attention, but not every problem requires the full treatment. Consider first what your client needs, before you start working on what the process flow chart requires, and when the problem is simple, keep the solution simple. Jane offers the key to remedies for performance issues.